Gerontophilia (2013) — I Like Your Wrinkles, Too (And Other Radical Acts of Desire)

Gerontophilia is that calm, silent bitch you never want to cross—like the unhinged older sister of Nymphomaniac, but with better politics and sharper cheekbones. The type to fuck her professors and defend her thesis in leather gloves. She’s unbothered, unflinching, and iconic on arrival—cinema’s quietly aging dominatrix. In a cinematic landscape where queer love must be young, hot, and marketable, Gerontophilia arrives as a wrinkled, softly defiant middle finger wrapped warmly in flannel.

Let’s spill this tea upfront: everyone has their kink. Mine? Older, fragile, toxically masculine men who carry their decades like battle scars. Lake, our teenage protagonist, shares a similar taboo desire—not for daddy vibes or leather-bound rendezvous—but for tender intimacy with elderly, deteriorating bodies. Bruce LaBruce doesn’t present this as spectacle or trauma porn; instead, he shows us a quiet, radical tenderness that defies normative logic. LaBruce isn’t just exploring desire—he’s staging a queer insurgency in slow motion, disguised as sponge baths and stolen glances.

Leo Bersani famously argues that queer sex is revolutionary precisely because it’s self-shattering—disrupting societal norms without needing redemption or explanation. Lake embodies this Bersanian ethos beautifully. His love isn’t a sanitized pride parade—it’s inexplicable, tender, and powerfully antisocial. LaBruce doesn’t beg permission; he lets desire misbehave openly, quietly subverting every mainstream ideal of queer eroticism. Lake is Bersani’s antihero in action—finding erotic joy not in what society permits, but in what it represses, in bodies that signify decay rather than virility. It’s not kink-shaming; it’s time-shaming—and LaBruce calls bullshit.

But there’s more: Lee Edelman’s “No Future” collides head-on with Lake’s yearning. Edelman argues queerness inherently disrupts heteronormative temporality—particularly the reproductive logic of legacy and the family unit. Lake’s attraction to aging, dying bodies isn’t just antisocial; it’s defiantly anti-futuristic. This isn’t future-proof queer romance—it’s erotic nihilism with a warm heart. It doesn’t march toward progress; it crawls into bed with it and whispers, what now, bitch?

For me, queerness has never been just about identity—it’s existential alchemy, a refusal to resolve contradiction, a dance with paradox. Human beings are fundamentally queer—living paradoxes of good and bad, logic and chaos. To be queer is to hold these tensions without shame. And Lake? He’s a soft-spoken icon of erotic anarchy—a twinkish angel of abjection with a sponge and a dream.

And then there’s Desiree. Sweet, impossibly kind, surreal in her emotional grace. In any other film, she’d be the disapproving girlfriend or hetero obstacle. But in Gerontophilia, she becomes a Muñozian vision of queer utopia. She listens. She trusts. She lets Lake be. Desiree doesn’t resist norms—she dissolves their relevance. She’s the emotional glitch in the system. Honestly? She’s the realest fantasy in the whole film.

Bruce LaBruce films aren’t just provocation. Beneath the cumshots, zombies, and corpses lies a steady hum of genuine tenderness. Whether it’s a zombie craving human touch or Lake lovingly sponging an elderly man’s back, Bruce consistently humanizes taboo desires. He dares us not just to tolerate the “undesirable” but to sit with our discomfort. Foucault warned us that power shapes the definition of normality; LaBruce responds with a punk shrug and radical empathy. He makes you feel something you weren’t supposed to. And then dares you to admit it.

My friend once teased me: “Pat, you only sympathize with ‘monsters’ because you’ve never had one hurt someone you love.”Maybe. But everyone carries shadows. Rejecting moral cleanliness isn’t the same as condoning harm—it’s acknowledging complexity. Queer desire isn’t inherently dangerous; erasure and moral panic are. LaBruce’s films aren’t threats—they’re mirrors. And sometimes what we see in them makes us squirm—not because it’s wrong, but because it’s too honest.

Gerontophilia isn’t just a kink—it’s radical politics. It interrogates the grotesque ways society discards aging bodies once their aesthetic value fades. LaBruce asks: “What if love, even strange love, is the only dignified act left?” He once said, “If you can’t change the world, at least you can corrupt it.”I’ll take it further: if you can’t change the world, love precisely the parts it tells you not to—especially the ones decaying in plain sight. Especially the ones it pretends don’t exist.

Bruce LaBruce is our generation’s Pasolini—if Pasolini had Instagram, a lube sponsorship, and a soft spot for zombies. His cinema is raw, erotic, and defiantly unmarketable—a cum-stained love letter to the unlovable. He isn’t here to comfort; he’s here to contaminate. And that line? “I already told you, I like your wrinkles.” Bruce, if you’re listening—every night, I’d whisper it back: “I like your wrinkles, too.” And maybe lick one, for good measure.

01 Jun 2025